Natasha hit the button to Steve's floor and gave herself 3 seconds to compose herself. Her emotions are too complicated right now. Anger, exasperation, worry, fatigue... she needed to pick one to show Steve.

Anger. Steve responds well to anger. Plus it'd make the conversation shorter, and afterwards she can reward herself by going costume shopping with Pepper. On cue, the elevator door slides open and before Steve could even look up from the couch where he's sketching, she starts with, "Steve, what the fuck happened? You need to stop being a jerk to James."

Steve put down his sketchbook instantly. "What did I do? What's wrong with Bucky?"

Briefly Natasha wondered if James knew that Steve still called him Bucky when he's not around. "JAMES is currently at my place, twitching over a pile of books about Bucky Barnes." Leave it to James to find the one non-digital library in the entire tower. Probably courtesy of Stark Sr.

"Books about Bucky? But why would he need that?"

Natasha let her anger show. "He told me you preferred Bucky. And for you, he's willing to erase what he's become just so that he can be."

"But .... I didn't..." Steve was all confusion. Natasha waited for Steve's brain to catch up. "Oh wait. THAT."

Steve was ... blushing? Curious. Natasha leaned against the counter, picked up an apple, and bit into it. A good way to defuse confrontations and ease into awkward conversations. "Well?"

Steve blushed harder. "So last night I got home and Bucky, he was naked. And he... he made a show of wanting it. Anyways, I reacted before I realized that he was still thinking of me as his handler." Judging by Steve's uncomfortable stance, Natasha could imagine what Steve meant by "reacted."

"It's okay, though. I put a stop to it once I realized that he was faking it for my benefit." Steve scratched his head. "And I called him James the whole time, so that shouldn't have caused any identity confusion." Steve picked up his phone. "Maybe I should confirm with Dr. Weiss..."

Nat sighed and stopped him. "Steve, Dr. Weiss isn't going to help here. There's things that she doesn't have personal experience with. There's two things that *you* need to consider." She relaxed her face a little, and Steve must have understood what he saw there, because he nodded and sat down on the couch to listen.

Natasha took a slow breath to brace herself. She's not good at coming at the truth head on, but it's what Steve needs. "One, that James isn't Bucky, and two, that James isn't faking it."

"But I *always* call him James. And the consent issues at this stage..." Steve takes it just as poorly as she'd expected, but at least the cards are on the table now.

Natasha sighed. "Steve, I've seen the way you look at James. The way you keep expecting him to remember, to suddenly start sliding into the right accent and making the right jokes. You keep calling him James and expecting him to be Bucky. And James isn't stupid. You don't survive what he has without being able to read people's real desires."

Steve bit his lip. "Well, Buc... he's recovering from being the Asset. He's getting more memories back every day. The other day he looked up Coney Island on a map, and when he laughed at Thor's joke he sounded just like..."

"That's exactly it, Steve -- you keep thinking of James as some temporary form in-between the Asset and Bucky. To me, he just sounds like James when he laughs." Steve opened his mouth, then closed it again. Natasha pushed forward. "James is his own person. He's what's survived after what HYDRA's done to him." She felt the scars and empty spaces in her own self as she said this. "As James recovers, he's going to become more James, not more Bucky."

Steve frowned and bit his lip. Natasha could tell this was going to take some processing for him, but at least he's taking the idea seriously.

"But *if* he's James, if he's going to keep treating me like his handler, letting me make all the decisions, from food to missions to which doctors he sees..."

"... How can he possibly want sex for himself?" Natasha chose to go for rueful instead of wistful. "Because consent doesn't work the same way with people like us."

Steve's jaw drops again. "Nat, I'm sorry, I didn't mean..." Natasha allows herself a little internal smile. Vulnerability hurts, being truthful hurts, but it works.

"Sex for us is... different. Me and the Red Room, him and HYDRA ... when you've been taken apart and pieced back together that many times, you don't really see bodies and consent in the same way. For me, it's a tool, a weapon I can use to take down an enemy. For James, who was turned into a weapon himself -- it's just an additional function or feature that he can offer. That he *wants* to offer to you."

Natasha could tell that this isn't working. Steve's life was about about choosing. Choosing to fight against his sicknesses. Choosing to be an experimental subject. Choosing to pilot a plane into the Arctic. Choosing to take down all of SHIELD. The only thing he didn't choose was his defrosting, and look how well he coped with that. Steve's firm belief in everyone's right to choose is what makes him a good man and Captain America, but it's making Natasha's message harder to process.

Already Steve is making protesting noises. "But doesn't that make it even *more* important that I let him reclaim that? He feels obligated to have sex with his handlers. That is duress, not desire. I can't do that to him. He needs to be able to choose for himself..."

"He *is*, Steve. As best as he can. Except that right now you're making him choose between staying James and the chance to have sex with you. And that's the shittiest choice of all. Don't you realize..." Natasha cut herself off before she truly lost control. Just because she knows how hard it is to find something of oneself amidst a maze of names and identities and missions doesn't mean she should take it out on Steve.

She sighed and got up to leave, tossing the apple core in the trash. "I have a date with Pepper." She needed to get out before all her insides exploded. "Just... go talk to him, okay? Talk to him as James, the man who chose to come to you when he could have gone anywhere after Insight. He's still at my place if you want to go right now."

Natasha managed to wait for the elevator door to close before slumping down and shivering. She can't picture loving someone enough to give up everything that she'd made of herself these last few years. Hopefully she'd gotten to Steve enough for him to stop it.

* * * * *

Steve waited a while before going out to find Bucky... er, James. Natasha was right -- it's unfair for him to treat James as just an unfortunate byproduct on the way to a fully recovered Bucky. After all, Steve himself wasn't the same person he was back in 1944. Still, just because his brain told him the rational behavior for the situation didn't make it easy for him to accept that the Bucky of his memories is just ... gone. To look at all the things that James does and *not* see it as flickers of *his* Bucky.

But James is *his*, too. It's not Steve and Bucky, best friends on the playground and the battlefield. It's Steve and James, handler and asset. And he owed it to James to at the very least, be a good handler. Well, duty calls.

Steve stepped into Natasha's living room just as James came out of her shower.

"You... you cut your hair." It looked exactly like Bucky's haircut from the war. It looked odd juxtaposed with James' scarred body.

"I figured it was time. Makes me feel more like my old self." Steve winced at the careful way that James replicated Bucky's accent and nonchalance from the 40s. Natasha was right. This feels all wrong. James is quieter, outwardly more submissive and restrained. James wouldn't saunter over and drape himself over the couch in a thin towel like this. James' eyes had a steely quality to them that Steve didn't realize he missed until he got pegged with one of Bucky's classic lazy come-hither glances. "You were right last night, Steve -- I need to get better before we can get back to the way we were."

And he was the one who pushed James to this.

He walked over and sat down gingerly on the other end of the couch. "James... you don't have to pretend to be Bucky for me."

A bit of James' nervous look slipped into his expression before he turned back to the half-lidded charm. "What do you mean, Stevie? I just recovered a big chunk of my memories. You want me to prove it to you? Ask me anything about that time."

"James... I'm sorry about what I said last night. Nat came to talk to me. About how I should stop expecting you to be Bucky."

There was a momentary silence as Steve stared awkwardly ahead and felt James' eyes bore into his head.

"You... you mean it this time." As James' voice lost the heavy Brooklyn, Steve let go of a breath he didn't realize he was holding.

Steve reached over and took James' hands. "I'm sorry, James. I kept looking for Bucky that I haven't been a good handler to *you*." Steve looked into James' cautious but assessing eyes, and thought about all the little ways that James expressed his love for Steve. The way James trusted Steve to make the right decisions at mealtimes. The way James let Steve read his memories in a literal open book. The way James put himself in harm's way to make sure Steve stayed safe on missions. Steve found himself smiling. This new relationship is just as deep as the old one, he just hadn't let himself see it for what it was. "Thank you, James, for always being here for me. You're the best asset a handler could have."

James sat up straight, then, his eyes soft and ... happy. Steve hadn't seen James this pleased before, and seeing that made Steve feel surprisingly happy, too. For the past two months, being a handler felt like a burden, something that he had to push through to get Bucky to a healthy mental state. But to care for James, to love him and trust him and help him -- that is a pleasure. A duty, certainly, but something he *wanted* to do.

Steve reached over and pulled James into a gentle embrace, and chuckled as James nuzzled eagerly into his shoulder. "About last night -- it'll take time for us to figure out what you and I actually want from each other. But in the meantime, don't stop being James, all right?" James responded by tentatively nibbling on Steve's neck, which sent a tingle straight down Steve's spine. Maybe obligation and desire don't have to be mutually exclusive after all.